The Garden of Fugitives,
Pompeii
They lie in a long
row, like a chain gang
curled around each other.
Imagine
a party of frozen climbers,
roped together
on a mountain. You almost
have it:
here is the tortured twist
of an arm, here
a hand clawing at a
down-turned face, here
a gaping mouth and muscles
tensed for flight.
Now give them names. The
boy crouching
on a barrel, face locked
behind his fingers,
could be your son. The
woman curled
around her stomach, making
a hollow
between her knees and
breasts, carries
your brother’s child in
her belly.
Look at the man whose head
barely rises
from the ground, whose
fingers reach out
toward the tourists holding
their ice cream
and cameras. His eyes look
like yours.
Do you see it now? Do you
see the dog
scratching at his collar as
if the leather
burns his skin? For a
thousand years
they all have gnawed at
rock and ash.
Invitation on K’s
Windshield
I confess: I loved a man.
He told me everything I
needed to hear,
took me by the hand, led me
outside
under a clouded moon. We
stripped ourselves
and naked threw our bodies
upon each other.
I have never told anyone
how my mind wandered,
considered the light angles
from nearby park lamps
and the odds of being
caught in the open.
There were six blades of
grass around my big toe,
three wrapped around the
little. I felt them
while he moved his body
over mine.
If you want my body, I will
give it to you.
Others have had it since he
first broke it open
that night on a wind-swept
hill.
I am hardly a stranger to
the way sweat dries
on skin and breathing
softens and slows.
If you want more than my
body,
you must find in me what
remains
of the girl who walked up
that hill and teach me
what there is in the slow
movement of bodies
against each other, the
feel of skin on skin,
the touch of lips that is
more than sex.
Teach me, and then if ever
in the future
our paths should part and
another asks me
over breakfast or late at
night under a half-moon
Who is the first person
you loved?
I
will confess I loved a woman.
Spreading the Ashes
After
granddad’s death, grandmother road-tripped
to
Florida. I imagine the urn strapped
in
the front seat of her south-bound convertible,
her
leathery hand smoothing the bronze, promising
At
the next stop . . .
She walks into Reception,
speaks
to the concierge: I would like to check in;
I
am leaving my husband here. In the afternoon
she
sleeps by the pool; he floats on a green kickboard,
rocking
in the wake of livelier swimmers.
A phone call:
she
admits the ashes remain unspread. She couldn’t
feed
him to the world’s largest alligator or toss him
out
to sea like fish guts from the pier.
She
explains:
she
has plans, brochures of Disneyworld. She’ll send
postcards:
pictures of her in the backseat of a roller coaster
smiling
for the camera flash as momentum carries her onward,
black
plumes trailing from fists clenched high over her head.
